Cooking Italian Recipes is a blog style website devoted to preserving the old family recipes of my Sicilian heritage. Cooking authentic Italian food is easy, fun and delicious! Some of these Italian dishes are new takes on old traditional family gourmet recipes. Here, we will also get into home wine making, review products and comment on wine - food pairings. Enjoy.

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Monday, November 5, 2012

How To Make Homemade Wine At Home – Start Here!

How To Make Wine At Home – Start Here!

So, you want to learn how to make wine at home and don’t know where to start….

I recommend that you start making wine at home, you should probably start from a wine making kit.That is a great and easy starting
point.As long as you can follow
directions and have patients, you will get great results.

Caution:Wine making
is addictive…once you start, you will
want to make more and more…It is
fun!….You will amaze your friends…and
it is easy…

But, I know what you are thinking….I don’t know if I will like the wine..I think it is harder than I can handle, and
I don’t want to sink a lot of money into it…

Don’t worry…I was
there to…If you could bake a cake
from a cake mix, you can easily make wine from a kit.It just takes longer…

You will need some basic wine making equipment.That equipment can be used over and over again…The initial cost for a basic winemaking equipment kit
is about $100 US.

But consider this…

With what I am going to recommend you start with, you will spend about $175
- $250 total for both the equipment and a basic wine kit…That will yield you about 25 bottles of
wine..This wine, in my opinion, will
be comparable (of better!) to wine that costs $10 to $15 a bottle in the
store.So, at $10 a bottle, you will get
approximately $250 or more of wine…

After that first wine kit, you will reuse the same
wine making equipment.So, if a wine kit costs you
about $40, and you get 25 bottles of wine, each bottle will cost you $1.60 a
bottle,not including the cost of the
actual glass wine bottle, which I encourage you to reuse your bottles, so that cost
is free.

Of course, you can get more premium quality wine kits for
about $100 US, but even at that cost you are still under $4 a bottle….

So, first you need to get a basic wine making equipment kit….

This is what you most likely would start with:

A Wine Making Equipment Kit includes:

7.8
gallon primary fermenter with drilled lid and airlock. – This is a plastic
bucket that is food grade with a top that is drilled to accept an airlock.

6-gallon
glass carboy with rubber stopper ( I know they sell plastic ones, but I
would recommend going for the glass one.

A
racking tube with tubing

Bottle
filler

Twin
lever corker to cork your bottles

Triple
scale hydrometer

B-Brite
Cleanser

Wine
bottle brush

Long
Handled Spoon

Carboy
Brush

Airlock

That is the basics…But I recommend that you get a little bit more than that….

Potassium
Metabisulphate – to sanitize things

Carboy
Handle – so you don’t drop your glass carboy and have shards of broken
glass all over the place.

You can also get all of these things at your local homebrew
shop.

Next, you will need a wine kit….For your first kit, I recommend two options.

The Higher Cost Wine Kit OptionYou can pick a high end wine ingredient kit that costs a bit more, but will give excellent results, like this one:

The Lower Cost Wine Kit Option

Now, for the low cost and surprisingly great option:

Vino Italiano Ingredient Wine Kit.

I would recommend going with what you like,
but I would personally recommend the Rosso Magnifico Kit, or the Merlot
Kit.If you like Italian Red Wines, you will
like these…

You may want to get some medium toasted oak from your local
homebrew shop to kick up the Vino Italiano Kit a notch…..Highly Recommended, but not necessary.

Now… Here is the deal…With amazon, you will get Free Shipping!!!!!FREE SHIPPING on that order…It may cost you $44 US for the kit, but free
shipping…and if you do the subscribe
and save, you will get it for even cheaper!Sign up for a 6 month Subscribe and Save.If you don’t think the wine is good, you can cancel
the subscription before the next one comes….I don’t think you will, however, want to cancel…Now, I need to also tell you I have no
affiliation with Amazon or Vino Italiano….

Ok.Now you have
your wine kit and the wine making equipment….Here
is what you need to do:

1)Clean
everything really well using the b-brite cleanser…Then sanitize witha metabisulphate solution made by mixing the
powder with some water… I make a gallon of this solution and save it for months
in a screw cap jug.

2)Make
the kit precisely following the directions with these important exceptions, if
you are making the Vino Italiano Kit and ONLY if you are making the Vino
Italiano Kit:

Vino Italiano Wine Kit Exceptions

Make the kit to 5 Gallons instead of 6……Put the concentrate in the bucket, but only
fill with water to the 5 Gallon mark…The Specific Gravity Reading on the Hydrometer will be a little high,
but that’s good!Your wine will be about
13 to 14 percent Alcohol.

Optional Exception:Add about ¼ cup of toasted oak chips from your homebrew shop to the
carboy before you transfer from the bucket into the carboy…Let the wood chips stay on the wine until
you rack (transfer) again.Now, I don’t like overly oak flavor in my wine…
Most American wines I find over oaked… But a little oak add something…

Note: other brand high end kits that come with oak, I half
the oak in those kits.

Another exception for all wine kits….Age your bottles for 3 to 6 months before
trying some, or bulk age in the carboy for 6 months before bottling.If doing the bulk aging, you will need to
top up the carboy with additional wine, especially if making the Vino Italiano
kit, since you are making 5 gallons of wine in a 6 gallon carboy….Either that, or get a 5 gallon carboy to bulk
age in.

Bottom line is you need to age the wine…Just because the kit says it is finished in
4 weeks, doesn’t mean that you should drink it in 4 weeks.Age it at least 3 months after
bottling.6 months, even better… you
will be delighted with the results…

You will need to have realistic expectations, however. The
Vino Italiano kit will not make you a $40 bottle of wine.It will, however, make you a $10-15 bottle
of wine.If you are looking for the $40
bottle of wine, you need a higher end kit…The best wine I ever made came from Mosti Mondiale renaissance kit
called Rosso D’avola.This kit, while
it needed at least 6 months or more aging, was better than some wines that cost
$100 a bottle, in my opinion…

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Welcome

Hello All,

Welcome to Cooking-Italian-Recipes.com! This blog is dedicated to the Italian cooking that I grew up on, Italian wine making and family traditions.

As a child, growing up a Sicilian, in New York, the aromas of this fine cooking permeating my home were an everyday occurrence. Getting to eat this fine Italian Cooking, from Grandma, I quickly became spoiled.

Here, I will share my modern day experiences, re-creating in the present from the memories of the past.

I think what makes this website different from others like it, is that I am just a regular guy. I am not a chef, nor do I do I cook for a living. You will not find me on Food Network! Not that I think there is anything wrong with Food Network... The point being is I am not some famous chef on TV. Just a regular every day Sicilian guy with no formal chef training.

So, if I can cook these Italian recipes, so can you! No special skills or training is required. All of the Italian recipes I present here are simple.

When I cook, most of the time, I believe less is more. I don't like to over complicate dishes. Flavors, in my opinion, should not compete with one another, but should support and enhance each other. Gourmet doesn't have to be complicated. It should be defined with that it tastes good.

Please feel free to give my Italian Recipes a try... Modify them as you wish.

And, if you enjoy them, please pass them down to your children and grandchildren! Build family traditions and memories around these Italian dishes.

As my grandmother used to say, Italian food is about love. To the memory of my Grandmother, I dedicate this site.